


don’t speak (don’t tell me cause it hurts)

by AiLaikHeda_OnMyBeda



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Character Death, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Feels, Glee References, Kara Danvers Doppleganger, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Post Crisis On Infinite Earths, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 12:47:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21969559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AiLaikHeda_OnMyBeda/pseuds/AiLaikHeda_OnMyBeda
Summary: She doesn’t need to ask them. She doesn’t need to ask anyone. The grim looks on their faces, the achingly painful wail from Alex says it all, and the plummeting of her heart through the very ground which she stood said it all as well.ORThe Kara Danvers Doppleganger AUThe one where for so long Lena thought she had lost everything, until she felt what it was like to truly lose everything. Lena learns to rebuild herself again in the most unexpected of ways.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 11
Kudos: 129





	don’t speak (don’t tell me cause it hurts)

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little sad fic with a little bit of a consolation.

She doesn’t need to ask them. She doesn’t need to ask anyone. The grim looks on their faces, the achingly painful wail from Alex, and the plummeting of her heart through the very ground which she stood said it all.

It was as though part of her knew before the other didn’t, part of her felt it before the other didn’t, the part of her that would always love and care for Kara Danvers, no matter what the other part of her unconvincingly said or did.

It was the part that broke her, just that little bit more each day since the second she found out her best friend was Supergirl. It was the part which yearned for Kara, which mourned for Kara, and the part which screamed for Kara with a kind of pain Lena never knew existed, not even comparable to the day she figuratively lost her best friend, until finally, that kind of pain had a reason to exist.

Now, Kara was just _gone_ , instead replaced by a kind of pain which reached the farthest corners of the only universe left in existence, a kind of pain Lena would never wish upon her worst enemies, not even her brother.

She was used to pain, to betrayal and to hurt, but this was something else. This was something new and crippling. This is what is felt like to lose everything, to lose her entire world, and it felt like the pain would never end.

* * *

The days seemed to become longer in Kara’s absence. They had become longer before, but at least in her anger Lena knew Kara was alive and well, catching a glimpse of the Super every now and then, piloting through the air like a bullet on a train.

Now, each time she looked out her office window, she found herself waiting for that little glimpse, always waiting. She was waiting for something that would never happen, waiting for the impossible. With the knowledge that Kara was _not_ alive and well, that she was simply gone, that she no longer existed with no explanation as to how or why other than, "she sacrificed herself for us," it made the days feel infinitely more longer, and infinitely more unbearable.

The first one to see her was J’onn. He was respectful, like he always had been, unbiased by Lena’s past actions and betrayals of even his trust in her short vendetta against the Girl of Steel.

He came in one day with a void expression, seemingly smaller than Lena had ever seen him, even in her high heels. He didn’t say much, besides that he could feel the weight of Lena’s pain even from the other side of the world.

With one less Super in the world and Kal-El caring for his newborn son, the burden of heroism had once again fallen to J’onn. He'd said her pain was distracting, that he felt it even when he wasn’t focusing, even when he wasn’t consciously checking in on Lena.

“How do you think I feel,” Lena had muttered under her breath. The small frown J’onn gave her was enough to tell her he heard her comment, and that he _did_ in fact did know how she felt, momentarily forgetting the Martian Manhunter was an empath and felt absolutely everything all the time and not even he could block this out.

What scared Lena the most was when J’onn told her that he wasn’t sure what felt worse, the pain Alex felt for her sister, or the pain Lena felt for her fallen friend. Ex-friend. They hadn’t even had the chance to try and mend their relationship before Kara… Lena simply wouldn’t let her.

It was a mistake which cost her everything, and she was only just barely living with the consequences.

It took Alex longer to come around, longer than everyone else. It had been three weeks since the memorial service of the fallen Super, and eight weeks since the crisis in which she fell.

  
  
Everyone was trying to adapt to their knew world and knew life on the earth uniformly known as ‘Earth-1.’ She didn’t blame people, for not caring, or for not caring as much as they should. They had lost people too, loved ones, parents, children, and friends.

They were all remembered too, those that were named in the aftermath of the crisis. They called them 'the vanished.’ Not everyone was technically dead, just variations of people disintegrated in the crisis while their doppelgänger's lived happily ever after. Or at least, as happily as they could.

The people tried to find the light in the smallest things, such as when a ‘Mark Benson’ from Earth-38 was named as one of the vanished in the remembrance ceremony, and one of the surviving civilians from Earth-1 happened to be a Mark Benson, and graciously let known his presence. He'd even looked like his Earth-38 counterpart too.

The weight of the pain the people felt was lifted that day, Lena could see it in their eyes and in their smiles, perhaps the first true smile she had seen in as long as she could remember. Everyone's pain lifted that day, everyone's but hers. She wondered whether there was a Kara Danvers on Earth-1, or a Kara Zor-El, somewhere out there in the only remaining universe, still living on thriving Krypton with her parents and possibly even a family of her own.

She considered asking Superman how to get to Krypton from Earth, just so she could see Kara again, or at least a version of her. Even though it wasn’t _her_ Kara and it would never be her Kara, something was better than nothing, and Lena had to find happiness in the smallest of things, she was afraid of what would happen if she didn't.

She spent the next week after that searching the Earth for anyone who looked remotely the same as how Kara used to, anyone with Kara’s eyes, her smile, her laugh, her hair, her anything, anything at all that could remind Lena of what it felt like to see Kara Danvers, a heart-stopping, jaw-dropping, body trembling kind of feeling.

She came up empty, deciding that for her, there would only ever be one Kara Danvers, _her_ Kara Danvers. Anyone else just wasn't even worth comparing.

Alex had found out about Lena’s little quest to search for Kara’s doppelgänger, still ever conscientious about Lena's activities. The Earth was big place now, with well over ten billion people populating each and every square centimetre of the globe.

Alex was certain, that at least one of those ten billion people would have to be her sister, or some variation of her. Maybe Alex needed the consolation as well, and maybe Alex and Lena weren’t in fact all that different, something she desperately told herself before the crisis hit.

It took some time, with even longer and more unbearable days, until Alex finally found someone. She sent Lena a file attachment one afternoon, exactly three months after the memorial service, while Lena was in a business meeting with Wayne Industries.

She left the meeting, not even sparing a second glance towards to Kate Kane or the other board members around the absurdly large table. There was a little message in the email, a simple, ‘Brainy found her this morning. She’s not Kara, but maybe it will give you a small peace of mind. You have my number if you need and the DEO is always open to you.’

It was baby steps, considering Alex had said all of about two words to her since she came to Lena for help the day Earth-38 was destroyed in the crisis. But baby steps were important, it’s all anyone could really do nowadays.

With trembling hands, she clicked opened the file attachment, revealing a series of documents and a few short clips, and there in front of her was girl. She wasn’t Kara, but she was beautiful like Kara, and looked every bit the way Lena remembered her Kara.

She was American, native, but lived in Africa and worked as a teacher. She was twenty-seven, the same age Kara would be if she were still alive. She was tall, her lithe body in the black and white pictures giving the illusion she would have towered over her Kara.

But Lena had an inkling, she knew that if she stood toe to toe with this woman, in heels and flats respectively, she would staring directly into those deep blue eyes which stared back at her from the identity document Lena was marvelling at, the same ocean eyes Kara used to gaze at her with.

The only thing which deterred Lena was that this woman wasn’t Kara exactly, and she was blonde either. She was a natural blonde apparently, but sported long brown locks. She started to imagine what Kara would have looked like with long brown hair, if she would have been prettier than this Marley Rose.

Of course she would have been.

Lena spent longer than she would ever admit to anyone staring at the photos of this young woman, watching the small clips of her interacting and teaching little children with as much regality and beauty as Kara had when interacting with little children as Supergirl.

What struck Lena the most was this woman’s laugh, Marley’s laugh. It came in quickly and quietly just once at the end of one of the small clips Lena had watched all but a thousand times. It was a small kind of laugh, more of a chuckle than anything, but when Lena closed her eyes, all she heard was Kara. And when this woman spoke, all she heard was Kara, just Kara.

She spent nights like that, with her ear buds in, her eyes closed and the clips on repeat, listening to this Marley girl speak and chuckle while she thought of Kara.

In her weakest moment, Lena sat staring at her computer screen, a confirmation booking of a one way flight to Africa staring back at her. She cancelled her booking of course, shut down and laptop and through it underneath her bed.

This girl was happy, despite everything, this girl had survived and she was happy, and she was making a difference in the world again, while all Lena could do was lock herself away in her room and stare at the same picture for hours on end with zero interaction with the outside world.

This Marley girl had probably lost people too, friends and loved ones, Lena was too afraid to even find out. Yet she was still out there trying to make the world a better place, despite the entire multiverse ending.

She might not have been Supergirl herself, definitely not Lena’s Supergirl, but she was incredible, and Lena couldn’t destroy that for her own selfish desires. She had already made that mistake once before.

* * *

As more months went by, the days seemed to become easier. Granted, Lena spent most of that time checking up on Kara’s doppelgänger in Africa. She might have even left a few large anonymous donations towards this Marley woman’s charity fund to develop primary schools for the children in Africa.

Lena started assimilating herself back into the game night, consisting of everyone it had before, just not Kara. Her absence was felt, and it would always be felt Lena decided. The lump in her throat, the ache in her chest, and the tears that sprung to her eyes each time she thought of Kara would never leave.

But maybe that was a good thing, because it served as a reminder that Kara was real, that Lena had known Kara, and Lena had loved Kara. The pain was the worst part and while it reminded Lena of everything she had lost, it also reminded Lena of everything she had experienced, and taught her never to take those things for granted again.

Alex was a little harder to convince of her good intentions than everyone else, but when it finally happened, Lena was thankful. She may not have a Kara Danvers now or ever again, but she still had an Alex Danvers and an Eliza Danvers, which in Lena’s mind, was the next best thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas Supercorps! I'm still working on updating my multi-chapter fics but I couldn't not write this. I have too many post-crisis and intra-crisis prompts that I couldnt not post a lil' somethin' somethin'.
> 
> Im considering writing a part 2 which actually introduces Mel's Glee character and doppleganger for this fiction. But I'm undecided on how that would work lol. Let me know if it's something you readers would like to read!


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